ires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation."

It then proceeds to say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed."

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human
family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would
be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved
African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the
people who framed and adopted this declaration; for if the language, as
understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the
distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have
been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they
asserted; and instead of the sympathy of mankind, to which they so
confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal
rebuke and reprobation.

Yet the men who framed this declaration were great men--high in literary
acquirements--high in their sense of honor, and incapable of asserting
principles inconsistent with those on which they were acting. They
perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it
would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not in any
part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which
by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the
family of nations, and doomed to slavery. They spoke and acted according
to the then established doctrines and principles, and in the ordinary
language of the day, and no one misunderstood them. The unhappy black
race were separated from the white by indelible marks, and laws long
before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as
property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader
were supposed to need protection.

This state of public opinion had undergone no change when the
Constitution was adopted, as is equally evident from its provisions and
language.

The brief preamble sets forth by whom it was formed, for what purposes,
and for whose benefit and protection. It declares that it is formed by
the _people_ of the United States; that is to say, by those who